It’s official! Islam Makhachev will make his welterweight debut at UFC 322 in Madison Square Garden against champion Jack Della Maddalena.
It’s a fight we’ve all known was coming for a while, but just didn’t have confirmation on the date and location. Now that the UFC has announced it will go down on November 15th, all the fighters and coaches can finally start talking about it. Like Jack Della’s head coach Ben Vickers, who spoke to Submission Radio about the bout last night.
“I think it’s been the
worst kept secret in in MMA,” Vickers said of the UFC 322 main event. “Khabib [Nurmagomedov] came out a while back and and basically announced the fight for the UFC. It’s nice that it’s finally officially announced so we can start making official plans.”
“Obviously, we’ve been training since the Belal fight for Islam, but now we can really pick up some steam and start making plans to get to New York.”
One plan that has already been confirmed for JDM’s training camp: the return of BJJ ace and fellow Australian Craig Jones. According to Vickers, they start training with Jones in September after the second Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) goes down Aug. 30-31st.
“Craig’s coming in,” he told Submission Radio. “He’s got CJI and then after that, he’s gonna come to Perth for a bit and hang with us for a couple of months, and we’re really gonna sharpen up the grappling side of things.”
“Craig’s a better grappler than Islam is, so we have the guy there that we need,” Vickers continued. “If Jack can handle Craig — which he can, because I’ve watched it numerous times, and Craig says himself he picks things up from Jack. So the confidence Jack gets from having Craig, the the second best grappler in the world, self confessed, in his camp at all times and and helping. And he helped [Alexander Volkanovski] in that remarkable performance that Volk put in against Islam in their first fight.”
“So we’re very confident in our team. Craig will be with us for a couple of months, which is awesome. Last time for Belal, we only had him for a couple of weeks. So I just think you’re gonna see an evolution in Jack’s game, and he’s gonna look even better.”
They also expected Della Maddalena to get some work in with Alexander Volkanovski as well, although the details on that were less ironed out. Just with those two involved, this fight camp is already looking pretty impressive. Islam Makhachev definitely has his work cut out for him in New York City.
